Lawsuit pending a year after natural gas explosion in Plum
Thursday, March 05, 2009
By Torsten Ove, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The explosion at 171 Mardi Gras Drive occurred a year ago today. Richard J. Leith, 64, was killed, his granddaughter injured and the home leveled.
Life has long since returned to normal in the quiet Holiday Park neighborhood, but the legal fight over who's to blame is just beginning. The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates accidents involving interstate pipelines, said in a report that the excavator, Winfield Scott Lea, probably bumped the gas line with his backhoe and damaged it while excavating on the property in 2003.
The impact on the 2-inch line "stripped the pipe's protective coating and made the pipe susceptible to corrosion and failure." It took five years for the pipe to fail, but it finally did on March 5, 2008. On that afternoon, the NTSB said, gas suddenly began leaking out, traveling through the ground and into the basement, where it quickly accumulated. Something then ignited it. The blast destroyed the house, owned by Antonio and Tina Pettinato. Her father, Mr. Leith, 64, was baby sitting her daughter, Gianna. The explosion killed him and hurled the little girl more than 50 feet, breaking a leg. Homes on either side of the Pettinato house were also damaged; the one at 167 Mardi Gras, owned by Don Widlocher and Patricia Doyle, later had to be torn down. After the blast, many residents had to be evacuated because no one was sure whether their homes were safe.
But for the Leith family, the ordeal will continue in court, where their suit against the borough, gas company, plumbing contractor and Mr. Lea is pending. The suit is proceeding slowly through Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, where it has been complicated by various cross-claims. In addition to Plum Borough, the defendants are Dominion Peoples Gas Co. and two Apollo contractors, Higgins Plumbing and W.S. Lea General Contracting, Mr. Lea's company. The case hinges on the events of Oct. 15, 2003, after the homeowners at the time had hired Kevin Higgins, the plumbing contractor, to replace the sewer line so the house would comply with county code. He, in turn, hired Mr. Lea to uncover the sewer pipe after Dominion and the borough located and marked the gas and sewer lines.
Mr. Lea told the NTSB that he used a backhoe to uncover the sewer line and replaced the original terra cotta line with a plastic one, then backfilled the site with porous sandstone. But he said he never used the backhoe near the gas line. Mr. Higgins, of Higgins Plumbing, told the board that he dug near the pipeline by hand. Both said they didn't damage the gas line.
The NTSB concluded otherwise, however, after examining the section of pipe at its laboratory in Washington, D.C. "The dents and the deformation in the pipeline indicate that it had been struck from below by something more powerful than a hand shovel," the board wrote, and said "it is likely that the excavator struck the pipeline with the backhoe."
It's not clear how this case will play out, but Mr. Perer said he'll find his own experts. "It is our position," he said, "that there is enough liability to go around."
Worse still ... it's mine 
